Now you're breathing champagne
I can feel it sparkle on my skin
while you revel in the falseness
of forgivable sin

Now I can feel the air around you
deflate and search for words
to stop your own from hemorrhaging
and to heal whatever hurts

Now you're breathing champagne
while you stumble to the places you once called home
like the park behind my house
and the west end record store

Now you can feel the world behind you
nipping at your heels
like the hundred hungry hounds
and the weapons they conceal

Now you're breathing champagne
like it's oxygen
and you are
lost at sea.

I wrote a note on the bottom of the bottle
you can read when you're in pain
"keep the memories in your chest
and keep breathing champagne."

They told me you had a past, and I guess I should have listened.
But who was I to deny the way you cried when your laughter was genuine?
  And I think I fell in love with you when you played your violin
But the music you played no longer resonates in me.

  You told me about your past, because I was the first one that would listen.
And I saw pain in your eyes that I wanted to steal and inflict upon the man that broke you.
  But you told me you were not broken, and I apologized in my head.
Not because you were right, but because I could not fix you.

  And for a short time I lived in the confessions you made while we drove through dirt roads
But now I reside in the first time you told me you were addicted to me
  And I wonder how easy it was for you to quit cold turkey
Because it's almost impossible for me to quit you.

  I told you that I'm empty and you told me you didn't think you'd ever be happy
And it felt like a shot to the heart because that's all I ever wanted to do for you.

  And now I'm not quite convinced there is a cure for what's ailing us.
Other than every moment you spent in my arms,
  the smell of your hair,
and each other.

I've recently fallen into an elite group of individuals: youth diagnosed with depression by their mothers.

I can't argue with her; she is licensed.

But I can't help but feel that my case is different, minor in comparison. I'd like to call it loneliness but it's more developed than that.

It's like a cancer that started in my fingertips when they realized there was nothing to hold on to, and has since spread to my heart or my brain, whichever is responsible for the distribution of numbness to my bones and vital organs.. I'll call it 3rd stage loneliness. I'm saving calling it the 4th stage for when it starts to feel terminal.

"Lonely" is kind of a **** of a word, like "love," or "beautiful." I think people like to use "lonely" like teens use cigarettes. It taste good when it falls off the tongue. And by my observation, they both cause cancer.

Everyone wants to be "lonely" but no one wants to be alone.
So I've put it upon myself to separate loneliness into subcategories, based on mortality rate.

If you're wondering why I'm lonely, don't bother. I'm wondering the same. I have friends a family that loves me, and the rest of the chemo-esque **** that's suppose to nurture you back to health. But
I've still got that tumor buried under my skin where no one cares to look.

I ain't got many friends I can talk to.

I've concocted a list of side effects of 3rd stage loneliness, if you're interested:
1.) Insomnia - the inability to completely shut the third eye on your skull because it persists on looking to the future.
2.) Selective Hearing - the inability to listen to supposedly happy music and instead sulk with the sounds of Bon Iver or Bright Eyes ricocheting through the canals of your brain. Music your friends "probably haven't heard of"
3.) Loss of Appetite - Don't worry, you still crave food and other survival necessities. You simply lose the appetite to expand through the universe. Loss of Ambition, as the form would say.
4.) Improved Acting Skills - You'll eventually learn to manipulate the stringy muscles in your face to pull up the corners of your lips when you feel you are expected to. Not all side effects are bad.


I am not one of those darkly dressing teenagers that complains with visible angst about being misunderstood. But I do have the hair for it.

I am not suicidal. Maybe I would be, but I seem to have been struck particularly hard by Side Effect #3.

But at first mention of depression you can see their faces squirm and contort to resemble a clumsy soldier tap-dancing through a minefield, while simultaneously conducting open-heart surgery on himself.

5.) Exaggeration.

This poem is not meant to sadden, to depress. It is simply for the public awareness of 3rd stage loneliness. If you know someone suffering from this disease, please call this hotline:

1-800-462-5663
(1-800-IMA-LONE)


The more you know...

A man walks into a bar...
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
A man walks into a bar,
the same bar every night.
The same seat,
the same drink,
The same friend by his side.
Swallows his fear and chases with beer
and fumbles with the question:
"Why are we here?"
His friend snorts and he spits
and he laughs and he chokes.
The man says,
"What if my life was merely a joke?"

There once was a boy with too much substance.
He breathed mostly in sighs
He battled heavy eyes
He had too much substance.

He thought life would be easier if he was like the rest.
If he didn't over-think everything
and if he didn't fall in love with every girl who smiled at him.
He sighed.

He wished he could listen to happy music
and that his bed was warmer.
He thought the substance should keep him warm.
It did not.
He sighed.

He did not consider himself to be particularly intelligent
or better than his peers.
He longed for someone cursed with substance.
He was lonely.
He sighed.

He did not wished to be loved,
but to be understood.
He sighed.

He wished he did not have to write poetry.
But poetry has substance.
He had a strange love for metaphors
and hidden meanings.
He sighed.
He had too much substance.

Sometimes I pretend
I never met you.

I pretend that the laughter
that occupied my head
is now just an echo
of an irresponsible child

I pretend, when you contact me,
that you are a stranger
you have the wrong number
no one you have ever really loved
lives here.

I pretend,  when I see pictures of you,
that the feelings are not scratching and biting
their way to the surface.
You are just another
S̶t̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶G̶o̶r̶g̶e̶o̶u̶s̶.̶ ̶B̶e̶a̶u̶t̶i̶f̶u̶l̶.̶ Pretty face.

I pretend that your words
are not engraved in my disfigured skin.
every sound that poured out of your mouth,
rolled sweetly off your tongue,
is now smoke in unforgiving wind.

I pretend, when I write poetry,
that I don't always think of you,
That my words will not give you
the satisfaction of knowing
I think of you always.

I pretend that my lips
never met yours,
and that I am, in fact, able to stand steadily
when I think about it.

Sometimes I pretend,
Sometimes I wish
I never met you.

Hey,
It's me again.
I just called to say
I miss the way
you'd sigh
when you kissed me

Do you remember
the night I offered
you the moon? You
refused, so I stole you
the sun instead
and you laughed.

I know it's late
and yeah, I've had
a few. You know it
makes me think
of you
and the music
of your breath
escaping and
expanding in the
cold air.

I can still smell you sometimes,
when the world is particularly empty.

I won't call again.
I just wanted to tell you
Goodbye. I love you. Goodbye.
Enjoy the Sun.

Now your blood floats in my veins, sweet toxic cleanse

Give my best to my family, and the rest to my friends

You're the cold flesh of winter, the ache in my bones

Watch the blacks of my eyes sink away like they're stones

So please tell me, please let me let myself in

Now my shoulders are heavier, than they've ever been

Burn all the photographs inside my head

Malevolence and memories are better off dead

And when I'm filled with solitude, silence, and sin
and the warm smell of nothingness seeps its way in
I hear the bell tolling and your voice in my head
so I start to clean up all your words that I bled
When I reach out for you, feel the coldness of air
Miss the grace of your skin, and the smell of your hair
And the raindrops start falling, mist in my eyes
Find there's nothing as hard to swallow as that last goodbye

I am sympathetic for Pluto
Not because I've lost my long-standing planetary status,
But because I am aware of how it feels to not fit Earth's criteria
and society's standards

I am not all a planet should be.

I am a leaky faucet in a flawless world,
Drip-dropping chaos into the absurd
I am a quiet brain saturating in happiness chemicals:
Serotonin and slow love songs.

I am an observer of the malicious mankind
Building, destroying, and leaving behind
I take quick visits to the sky
When I am lost in my mind.

I am a collector of things less than fine:
Quotations from poets and antiques from cloud-nine
I am the comforter of Plutonian souls our simple world forgot
I am supposed to be a planet, but a planet I am not.

You know
I still remember the sweet release of quiet chemicals
into my pulsating brain
the first time I kissed you.

You know
I won't soon forget.

You know
I still feel the silent tingle of your words
on my skin.
Desperate hands reaching, longing for you.

And you know
I can feel the warmth of the sunlight falling through your bedroom window
delicately wrapping us up together
while your head rested on my chest.

I can always smell your hair
when I inhale
and I love you
when I exhale.

But you know that.

I watched the sun quietly collapse
and heard it plea through gasping breaths
for a few final seconds to repent.

What a thing of beauty.